More Fall Than Hammer - 45%

You need a big personality and talent to properly face a cover version, maybe even more than you need to write a brand new song. Now you can say everything about Hammerfall, but they have personality and talent.

Obviously the cover versions are often the best tracks in their albums, but they don't shine for intensity or creativity, and the final result usually swings among the acceptable, the meaningful and the low butchering (what they did with "Breaking The Law", swapping their roles inside the band, is an insult to Judas Priest and to the music in general). Mostly they simply follow the original version as close as possible, playing with the same mastery of a debutant downloading the tablatures of his favourite bands from internet, but without his juvenile excitement.

Honestly, if we wanted to listen again to tracks like "Man On The Silver Mountain" of Rainbow, "Breaking The Law" of Judas Priest (here blasphemed by the voice of an Oscar Dronjak gone mad), "I Want Out" of Helloween or "Youth Gone Wild" of Skid Row, we would not entrust the task to the skills of a band like Hammerfall, given with a vocal interpreter who can only flatten any form of beauty.

All in all the single merit of this collection, which features already releaed versions mostly (only the covers of Europe, Skid Row and Riot are new!) is that to dust some deserving bands of the past (Warlord, Stormwitch), for the rest is just an abused trick to fill up the shelves. Many of these songs are "Masterpieces", undoubtedly. That's why Hammerfall should leave'em alone.